Flags: stripes and crosses There are things that we take for granted in use, with few exceptions, two different our life, not bothering what their origins or approaches with their flags. real meanings are. Such are the flags of our One is the striped, tricolour- kind of flag. nations. We salute them, we respect them The tricolour origins from the French but nobody, at least very few of us wonder revolution, where the three colours ever, that maybe a hundred years ago, our symbolised brotherhood, freedom, and grandfathers, or the fathers of our equality. grandfathers, (or the fathers of our Tricolours became popular in the time of grandfathers' fathers or their fathers; if we the birth of the nations in the 19th century. want to quote some Monty Python here) Some countries, however, rotated the may have respected other flags. This is vertical position to horizontal position. especially true for Germany or the Eastern European "newly formed" states. It was not necessary, nevertheless, that the Has the highly regarded reader audience country is a republic to have a tricolour- ever wondered about the origins of their type of flag. Just think of the black-white- national flags? Have you ever realised that red flag of the Bismarck- Germany. Or different cultural circles use similar today's Netherlands. symbols for their flags and these differ Among the countries being dealt with on from area to area. this website, the followings have striped Northern European and European countries flags: The other approach, used in Northern had on each other. Except for Finland, all Europe is the crossed flag. The cross can Scandinavian countries are parliamentary symbolise many different things. For monarchies, so talking about tricolour-type example Sweden's cross is based on the of flags is not relevant. Danish flag, the choice of colours is based Finland has so strong cultural and on their medieval coat of arms. The historical bounds to Sweden, that explains Scandinavian countries were, over everything about their white flag with the hundreds of years, more or less voluntarily, blue cross in it. bound to each other in the Calmar Union. Here is a list of the flags of the That's the reason of the great effect they Scandinavian states: Sweden Finland Norway Denmark Iceland In case of the British Isles, the crosses in Let us see, what the flag of Great Britain is the flags represent Catholic saints (not that composed of: there would be other saints), so these crosses are in connection with religion. St. George's cross that St. Andrew's cross, that and St. Patrick's cross that represents England, represents Scotland represents Ireland (today, only Northern Ireland). If we put together these flags, we got the famous flag of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the so called Union Jack: St. George's cross, on some level to include it. About the reasons you can represents Wales as well, otherwise the read in the Union Jack link above. Welsh would be quite upset, that they left out their dragon from the Union Jack, The Welsh flag with the red dragon in it: although it would have been quite difficult .